"strength and song"
Exodus 15:2
I've found myself reading an unusual amount of poetry lately. A strange combination of factors coming together. First of all, my Amazing Boy is done with a couple of his 7th grade textbooks. I won't wait until September to break open his 8th grade stuff, but neither am I going to dive into them in June. My kids already give me a hard time because we don't stop school for the summer. I don't want to push them over the edge!
So we finish our work a little faster than we normally would and I have a chance to supplement with other things. Maybe an extra worksheet that seemed like too much work when it was first assigned. Maybe something fun, like a geography word search or something.
And poetry. Two or three times a week I like to end our school day with one of us reading a poem out loud. I've never considered myself an expert on poetry, so it's equal fun to come across a favorite of mine, or to read one I've never heard before.
In addition, a blogger friend of mine recently posted some of his own poetry, and I've been reading one every few days. So between that and teaching, I'm finding myself reading a poem almost every other day.
My son and I read one the other day that was wonderfully interesting. It was called "Nature" and it was written by H.D. Carberry. I'm not familiar with Mr Carberry, but the information superhighway tells me he was a Jamaican lawyer who died in 1989.
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| photo credit: zahuren.wordpress.com |
The poem was interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, it didn't rhyme at all. Not that I have anything against rhyming, but I loved being able to show my son that this particular poem had no rhythm or meter at all. What it had, though, was emotion; and language that painted a picture. We talked about the words that Mr Carberry chose, and the colors and images they brought to mind. That's what poetry is about: making the reader feel something.
It got me to thinking about one of my favorite passages in Scripture. A passage that is so visual to me that I can not only picture the scene, but I am inspired by it.
The passage is Isaiah 6. The whole thing is visually evocative, but two things stand out to me. First of all, these words:
"I saw the Lord sitting on a throne,
high and lifted up,
and the train of His robe filled the temple.
Above it stood seraphim;
each one had six wings:
with two he covered his face,
with two he covered his feet,
and with two he flew.
And one cried to another and said:
'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!' "
Beautiful. Such a picture we get from Isaiah's sharing of his vision! But the second thing that stands out to me are the words that come right before those. Isaiah starts chapter six by saying, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord..."
I just love the fact that Isaiah had beauty and majesty and glory to share with us, but first, he gave us the basic. The earthly fact that allows us to place this event in time. It was the same year that King Uzziah died. With words like those, all over Scripture, scholars have been able to link together Biblical and secular sources to help us understand even more.
In Genesis 8:13 we read, "in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month..." In Jeremiah 1:2 we see, "... in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign..." And this year, studying John, I noticed a new one: John 13:30 ~ "Having received the bread, Judas went out immediately. And it was night."
Just like Isaiah, John adds that to give us a clearer picture. It's both symbolic and factual. The darkness that would fall upon the land as Jesus hung on the cross began, in a way, even as Judas set out on his mission of betrayal.
The Bible is supposed to inspire us to love, worship and serve. But it is also real. It is verifiable. Facts intertwined with feelings. Truth in beauty.
~ "Sanctify them by Your truth.
Your word is truth" ~
John 17:17
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